Blink
by Scotia Daniel
Summary: Fishing through the attic of his and April's house, Donatello finds a pair of his daughter's old ballet shoes.


The door to the attic creaked open and Donatello poked his head in. He couldn't remember the last time he had gone up to the old storage area, but it must have been a while. It was dustier and filled with more cobwebs than the last time he had gone into the attic. Donatello repressed a sneeze and climbed all the way in.

Furniture was scattered here and there and the spaces between were filled with boxes of junk that he and his family and left up there and forgotten about. He mentally thanked April for nagging him to clean the area up. It was about time.

Donatello tilted his head and heard the satisfying crack his neck made and got to work. He left the furniture alone for the most part, since it had been there even before him and April had married and moved in. Furniture from her grandmother and aunt, he presumed. The house had belonged to April's grandmother once upon a time ago, and it was passed on to April's aunt. And naturally, it now belonged to them.

The mutant took the first box he saw and began to rummage through it. A bunch of old toys, books, clothes...he reached his hand farther in and brought up a pair of two small pink ballet shoes.

The ninja held them in front of him for a good while, staring at the small shoes. He turned them over to look at them in different angels and in the different light. A small smile pulled at his lips.

The shoes had belonged to his daughter once upon a time ago. When she was five, he and April had signed her up for ballet lessons. She loved the dance, but it frustrated her greatly. Donatello remembered how they spent so much time on finding the right slippers to fit her abnormal feet. Magdalene, like her father, had inherited larger feet than a regular human's, and they were much wider than the girls' feet her age. In the end, they had to have them custom made to fit the girl's needs.

Donatello felt tears build up in his eyes and had to rub them away. It seemed like just yesterday his little girl was, well, just a little girl. In a week, she would be a married woman at the ripe age of twenty-five years old.

It was as though she grew up before him in a blink of an eye. Donatello could still recall the time she had been born to the time she took her first steps, lost her first tooth...first time April took her to Kindergarten, the first grade, middle school, and the time they said their goodbyes when she went off to college. In a blink of an eye, she was grown up. In a blink of an eye, she was gone.

It was hard to believe that his daughter had once been able to fit into those small shoes in his hand. Had once been a bundle in his arms...now she was about to really start her own life. This was the first step where she'd go from being 'me' to being 'we.' The first step to sharing her world with someone else, the first step to not having to really rely on him and April, the first step to having her own family...

That thought made Donatello freeze. He'd never thought that she'd have her own family. Well, sure he did deep down, but now that she was closer than ever to that made him think. She'd make a great mother. She was sweet, bubbly, kind...she helped April cook often and spent hours with Donatello on his projects. She was as smart as she was beautiful.

She'd be following in her parents' footsteps with science, but she was also an artist. Maggie had joined many acting groups and had been apart of the musicals her high school put on. He remembered watching the live feed of his daughter's performance as Mrs. Pots in their production of Beauty and the Beast. It had been one of his proudest moments. The world was her stage and she could snag any role she wished.

Donatello could picture her sitting with him in his and April's kitchen ten years from then, mugs of coffee in hand. He could imagine her red-brown hair tied into a bun and looking tired from handling her own children.

Donatello could imagine her smiling at him and say: "I can't believe my little one is almost eight years old! And their little sibling is nearly five! It seemed like just yesterday I had given birth to them...got any tips on how to enjoy life with them more, dad?"

And the old mutant would lean back in his chair, sip his cup of coffee, and think about her question. His answer for her. And after a moment of silence, he'd look back at her and smile, flashing the famous gap in his teeth, and give the honest advice he could give his precious gem: "Don't blink."


End file.
